Information, announcements, and hard-earned wisdom for students in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

Category Archives: Entertainment

I know, I know. Theses are due next week. You currently live in the Reg. Last night you happened to leave your spot for like 20 minutes without marking it with a sweatshirt/scarf/coffee mug/whatever and then you came back and there’s some person sitting there in pajama pants eating Twizzlers and it had the perfect position under the florescent lights and now how are you supposed to finish anything today and that other new person is seriously talking on the phone and your advisor just emailed you again and YOU WANT ME TO THINK ABOUT CONVOCATION?!? I’m not about to graduate; I’m about to club Twizzler kid over the head with a hardcover copy of the Chicago Manual of Style and then get taken away by the UCPD and seriously how is that person managing to eat Twizzlers audibly?!?!

So it might seem like I’m jumping the gun; I get it. Buuuuut you likely are about to graduate, and people might be coming to watch you do that, and you guys might want to go out eating and drinking somewhere new and special (not that Jimmy’s isn’t special…). You’ll be done soon and then it’s time to explore! So either bookmark this page for later use or use the guide below as a mouthwatering study break. Continue reading →

Emily Nordling, current MAPHer and spec fic writer, wrote the following post for Tor.com (for full post, click on the link below):

Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin and Molly Gloss were two of the keynote speakers at last week’s conference for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference. I’d never been to the conference before, but I couldn’t help but be surprised; there is a fairly common—and justified—defensiveness among SFF readers and writers when it comes to the mainstream literary world, whether due to its cooption of writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Angela Carter, or to its perpetuation of the high art/low art divide. Continue reading →

Translation, poetry, presses, Singapore, publishing… Read on for Hao’s hour-by-hour (more or less) account of one whirlwind afternoon and evening behind the scenes at AWP.

12:30pm

It is the second day of conference. I meet fellow Singaporean, friend and mentor Alvin Pang. It is always nice to see a familiar face in an unfamiliar place. He is with Drunken Boat editor Ravi Shankar and other members of his staff. I listen in on their plans to make Singapore literature take over the world. Ravi wants to feature a folio of Singapore poetry on Drunken Boat, and Erica Mena pitches a multi-journal collaboration to bring world poetry to the forefront of the literary-journal consciousness. The excitement is palpable. Continue reading →

Download Marooned! with Matt & Bill, a new podcast by and for graduate students. It’s about graduate student life and all things academic. Features Bill Hutchison (MAPH ’12) and Matt Hauske (current MAPH preceptor). The podcast is free on iTunes – leave a review!

Disclaimer: Chris gave me permission to point out that this is “fiction.” No MAPH students were chained to the UChicago booth during AWP 2014. 2013, well, that’s in the past…

While I was sitting at booth 411 of the AWP Book Fair, smiling scribers would pass by from far-off conference center rooms, glinting with the secrets they had just learned of the craft, mumbling things like “the open ending” or “linked story collections” over and over to themselves. I would sigh, try to catch one of their eyes, and turn their attention towards our program. “Why don’t you try that open ending here, at U Chicago?” I would say. Or, “We like linked stories too.” But, really, this was my way of trying to penetrate those golden orbs of knowledge they possessed now from the panels. What was it like to attend an AWP panel, I thought? What sort of person would I be if I had attended one? Yes, something in them seemed to coronate these people who now glided through the aisles of booths, breezily calling themselves “writers.” The black iron clamp around my foot jiggled the chain that linked it to our table as I sat down and began imagining my own panels and the treasures they would hold: Continue reading →

A five-day excursion to (surprisingly) sunny Seattle with friends and colleagues left me with a myriad of stories. Where do I begin summing up my experience at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference? From my first time in a hostel, to drinking “Unicorn Jizz” at a psychedelic Victorian bar, to witnessing first readings and being surrounded by thousands of people all in a writerly state of mind, it’s hard to pick my favorite part. So instead, I’ll focus on what impacted me the most.

Are you a poet? Do you seek to expand your audience through readings and interviews? Well, if you’re an uncharismatic reader of your own work, don’t expect a slot at the Texas Book Festival, at least not while Steph Opitz is the Literary Director. Continue reading →

I arrived at the conference about 90 minutes after getting off my flight. I’m a nervous traveler, so the t-shirt and jeans I was wearing were a bit sweaty and anxiety ridden. My jeans and shoes looked fairly presentable, but my bright blue Hound of the Baskervilles t-shirt visually alerted every one of my newbie status the moment I stepped inside the convention center. There were other people in jeans and t-shirts (and sports jerseys?), but I didn’t want to be lumped with that crowd, if you catch my drift. I wanted to be lumped with the buttoned-down men and business-casually dressed women. The other students from my program were all dressed within these categories, and I’m not at all sure how I missed the memo. When I left the conference to get lunch at Jimmy John’s (all of their sandwiches are .74¢ cheaper in Seattle!) I raided the clearance rack at a nearby Old Navy to buy a $10 button down. I even tucked it in, which is far cry from my typical untucked, half-buttoned flannel getup. I usually avoid tucking in shirts of any kind for fear of looking like a young dad about to play golf, but as I held the shirt over my body in a mirror at Old Navy I thought I looked like a young writer who was not quite professional. Yet.